6th September 2010 Archive

Those who want their notebook PCs to play music and video while managing a burgeoning digital image collection should cast an eye at the HP Pavilion dv6-3085ea. It's an attractively slim computer with a design outline that's generally reminiscent of Apple's MacBook Pro. The clamshell even stays closed thanks to Apple-style magnets, instead of a conventional sliding catch.

Hitachi is reported to be considering an IPO or sale of Hitachi GST, its disk drive operation, ranked third in the industry behind Seagate and Western Digital. How much is it worth? Who would want to buy it?

If Google is trying to shake off its reputation for a pathological hostility to creative businesses, then at least one senior policy hasn't got the memo. Google's UK policy chief called for Government to give creative industries the bum's rush last week - arguing that Britain's retailers were just as important.

VMware is taking some big steps in the security and network management arena with its vShield product set. I sat in on a deepish dive into the somewhat new security products being offered by VMware to deliver on the ‘secure’ part of their “Secure Hybrid Cloud” initiative.

Those of you still recovering from Sylvester Stallone's 1995 interpretation of Judge Dredd will have to wait until 2012 to see if Karl Urban can make a better hash of bringing the classic 2000 AD character to the silver screen.

Many people tend to associate High Performance Computing (HPC) with exotic supercomputers with esoteric CPUs, high-end networking and storage fabrics, and custom applications simulating nuclear explosions, virtually crash-testing cars or designing the aerodynamics of the latest jetliner.

Reports suggest that Russia has re-started work on a Cold War project intended to produce a laser cannon mounted on an enormous military transport aircraft in the style of the USA's Airborne Laser Testbed 747.

If you're mad as hell and you're not going to take this any more, if you're blissfully happy and can't wait to tell the world, or if you're just tired of listening to product marketing managers who don't know what it's like to get your hands dirty, now's your chance. Don't rant in the pub: share it with millions of Reg readers instead.

Children's Rights Group ARCH has threatened to take the Information Commissioner to a judicial review after the data regulator declined to take enforcement action the Youth Justice Board for unlawfully collecting and distributing data.

A New Zealand company founded by a garage inventor says it is in talks to sell its so-called "Jetpack" - actually a personal ducted-fan aircraft too heavy to be lifted by its user - to the US military.

There's some grim news today for those kids who are still allowed to play conkers, albeit in full body armour with helmet and visor: the crap summer weather has caused a "real shortage of serviceable conkers".

What a brilliant idea for a competition! Nokia has hired Pamela Anderson and Gossip Girl actor Ed Westwick to appear in The Commuter a short film short shot entirely on the not-quite-launched Nokia N8 - and you can appear in it too.

It's only September, but we feel pretty confident that the El Reg 2010 Product Name of the Year will be awarded to the spectacularly-titled BumChum - a silent bass drum monitoring system which promises lively "bottom-end thump".

According to AMD-spinoff GlobalFoundries, chip-baking is about to hit a wall — but they're ready for it. They also claim that their way of handling the latest advance in chip materials is superior to that used by Intel and soon to be introduced by their ginormous competitor, TSMC.

Mozilla's Bespin project – an open source effort to build a web-based code editor – has been rechristened Skywriter, and its official repository has been moved to GitHub so that developers can more easily fork the project.